‘Divine Madness’ holds up remarkably well almost 20 years after it was
made. Director Michael Ritchie filmed Bette Midler -- "the Divine Miss
M," as she still bills herself -- in concert at the Pasadena Civic
Auditorium in 1980. Time, of course, doesn’t usually change our
perspective on great song delivery, but a nice surprise here is that
most of Midler’s between-songs banter hasn’t dated, either, proving
that a good dirty joke (and there are zillions of them here) has a
healthy shelf life.

One arguable misstep comes right at the beginning in Chapter 1, in what
looks a lot like an acted-out scene of the theatre house manager
lecturing his young ushers on the evening’s duties. It may be real, but
it doesn’t seem real. While this duality informs much of Midler’s
performance, the sequence (factual or dramatized) is a little too
self-conscious in playing up her shock value. Then as now, Midler is
fabulous, she’s fun, she’s raunchy, but by 1980, you’d have to find
some really high-strung horses if you wanted her to frighten them.

The sound mix on Chapter 2 is excellent, allowing the music to triumph
yet co-exist with the crowd’s roar of welcome as Midler’s back-up
singer/dancers the Harlettes -- Jocelyn Brown, Ula Hedwig and Diva Gray
on this tour -- rocket into "Big Noise From Winnetka" with an energy
level that somehow soars even higher when Midler takes the stage. This
is one happy diva. The cameras love those big brown eyes that sparkle
with amazement, joy and speculation on what she can get up to next.

Chapter 3 has lovely clear sound on the dialogue, picking up relatively
little air as Midler launches into the first of her comedy routines,
describing the Harlettes as her Greek chorus: "These girls don’t know
shit about Euripedes, but they know a lot about Trojans." Her delivery
is friendly and inviting; her patter is largely about sex, but it’s not
competitive or exclusionary. She’s even kind to her hecklers, laughing,
"We’ll get to that later" instead of being thrown off-stride. When she
talks, Midler succeeds at creating the feeling that she’s just sat down
to share the latest jokes and gossip with her good friends. She has an
intriguing combination of wonderful confidence and an open desire to
please.

The picture quality is another matter. While the imagery is never
exactly poor and improves greatly in the film’s second half, Chapter 5
has a particularly grainy quality and a number of small white
scratches, as though the print went through one too many processes on
its way to the DVD. The picture does become much sharper in later
sequences and director Ritchie gets a striking, Japanese-theatre-style
image at the beginning of a fog-shrouded pantomime at the start of
Chapter 18.

Also, while ‘Divine Madness’ is a no-frills DVD -- although, blessedly,
it remains in its original widescreen ratio -- the liner notes mention
that two numbers, "Shiver Me Timbers" and "Rainbow Sleeve," included in
the theatrical release, have been cut from this version. It would be
interesting to know if the reason for this is artistic, technical or a
problem with song rights, but this isn’t the sort of question that
liner notes are known for answering.

Midler has a tendency to camp it up on the high-energy numbers -- her
ability to sell a song while simultaneously spoofing is one of the
things that has made her so popular. She goes through major teen drama
on Chapter 16’s "Leader of the Pack," literally crawling on the floor.
Still, when she wants to settle down with a ballad, she can switch off
all impulses to irony and go for the throat. For those who prefer their
emotions without satire, the best is saved for last, as Midler segues
from a tender, aching cover of the Rolling Stones’ "You Can’t Always
Get What You Want" in Chapter 20 to Chapter 21’s slow, resolute take on
Bob Dylan’s "I Shall Be Released." The lyrics have been tweaked on the
latter to reflect romantic rather than institutional anguish, but
Midler sells it so well no one ought to mind.